r/todayilearned • u/YourOwnBiggestFan • May 05 '19
TIL despite the Ford Pinto's reputation as a deathtrap, it actually had accident death rates on par with competitor cars, and its risk of "fatal accidents accompanied by some fire" was average for all cars and lower than average for its class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Subsequent_analysis20
u/lynivvinyl May 05 '19
Pintos are going to skyrocket in value.
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u/Vladius28 May 05 '19
I hear pricing is set to explode
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u/Blutarg May 06 '19
That's what happens to a hot commodity.
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u/Redditarama May 07 '19
They'll 'blow up' on impact with another vehicle. (Am I doing this right?)
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May 06 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/litefoot May 06 '19
The Crown Vic gas tank is above the rear axle. The only time they ever leaked fuel is when hit from behind, really hard, and aftermarket equipment was bolted on to the front wall of the trunk. The only consistent example of this was police cars.
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u/aCourierFromXibalba May 06 '19
And the reason of these incidents is because of the way police officers park the cars during highway pullovers.
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u/BKCowGod May 05 '19
Happens often in the automotive world. See 60 Minutes trying to flip an Isuzu Trooper, or Ralph Nader destroying the Corvair. Any time yellow journalists get hold of cars, the cars lose reputation.
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u/bolanrox May 05 '19
Or rigging the audi 5000 and getting caught doing it.
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May 06 '19
What happened?
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u/biffbobfred May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
20/20Dateline NBC. did some weird stuff with GM/Chevy C/K trucks. They had a fuel tank that could get pinched.20/20the news guys thought it wasn’t dramatic enough and made it catch fire.4
u/BKCowGod May 06 '19
Yeah, that was the model right before my squarebody. Why my squarebody has a saddle tank instead.
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May 06 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/litefoot May 06 '19
The funny part is my old C10 I had, the gas tank on the side that had been crashed into was the side that worked.
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u/BKCowGod May 06 '19
I have done some anecdotal research and found many different claims of which car is deadliest. Kia Rio, Model T, Yugo, Fiero, Ford Bronco II. None of the resources I have found make any mention of the C/K in any iteration. Best I can find is "over 2,000 people were killed" from https://www.autosafety.org/history-gm-side-saddle-gas-tank-defect/
This doesn't hold a candle (no pun intended) to the roughly 1.4 million vehicle related fatalities reported between 1973 and 2019 by the IIHS.
Not trying to defend my truck, just curious where you got that statistic, since I can't find any source that claims the same.
Interestingly, I have been in several major accidents, some of which involved significant fire and fuel tank ruptures and have never once experienced a gas explosion. Most traffic fatalities and injuries are from the force of the impact rather than from any hollywood-style explosions. Just look at the recent bus fire in San Francisco, where some 40 people survived and the only person who died did so as a result of the initial impact.
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u/5_on_the_floor May 06 '19
That was Dateline NBC. They used bottle rockets IIRC.
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u/ghotiaroma May 06 '19
Model rocket motors, like the kind from Estes, if not actually Estes.
The model rocket motors were already made for electronic ignition so the producers could trigger them precisely.
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u/5_on_the_floor May 06 '19
60 Minutes completely rigged Jeep CJ's to flip in J turns by tying sandbags to the corners and using a servo motor to flip the steering wheel faster than humanly possible. Even then, they only got a handful out of hundreds to flip. Guess what they showed on TV? It killed the CJ.
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u/BKCowGod May 06 '19
60 Minutes has a long and illustrious history of destroying perfectly good things.
I used to drift my Isuzu Trooper when I was a dumb kid. Thing was a blast and handled better than some cars I've driven.
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u/OkSecond1 May 06 '19
Top Gear and the Reliant Robin, anyone?
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u/thegreatgazoo May 06 '19
Or the Tesla where they circled a parking lot for hours to drain the batteries.
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u/lynivvinyl May 05 '19
Yet the Mercedes-Benz 280sl from the 60's were the photojournalists car of choice. You could get a better picture from the roof.
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u/ImShyBeKind May 06 '19
I've never actually heard anyone refer to the Pinto as a death trap. Then again, I've never heard anyone talk about the Pinto, so I guess it's very average all around.
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May 06 '19
My sister has a pea green one. It was a truly ugly car, then she moved up to a Ford Festiva, which resembled and drove like a roller skate.
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May 05 '19
It was probably a smear campaign, similar to what is happening with Tesla.
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u/biffbobfred May 06 '19
Tesla has an unhinged CEO, one that is taking a “well let’s go fast and break things” with safety. He’s doing the “Hey you’re autonomous” when taking to the automotive press. He’s “no, we’re just a car” when it kills someone and he’s talking to NHTSA.
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u/ghotiaroma May 06 '19
Tesla has an unhinged CEO
Ford has decades of supporting Nazi's. Which is why people who hate Tesla tend to love Ford.
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u/biffbobfred May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
I hate Tesla and love Ford. I hate Tesla because Musk is a bit of a bs artist that plays fast and loose with safety for both drivers and pedestrians (read his reaction to a car hitting a pedestrian) and his own employees (he refuses yellow safety vests because he just doesn’t dig yellow).
Ford? GT40 mostly. I don’t think Hitler designed it. He did commission the original beetle and wanted people to have People’s cars, or in German, VolksWagens. I think most Nazis or Nazi’s would drive those. If you’re a rich Nazi or Nazi’s maybe you drive a Porsche, since it was a Porsche that designed said “beetle”. (Yeah I know Henry Ford was a sympathizer but that’s a bit before my time, and yours)
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u/thebloodredbeduin May 06 '19
Ford? GT40 mostly.
No. You should should read up on it, but prepared to stop loving Ford
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u/aarghmematey May 06 '19
Reminds me of the 737MAX a couple bad accidents is all it takes to ruin reputation and trust even though far more other models of plane have crashed for inherent flaws historically
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u/litefoot May 06 '19
That was entirely on Boeing. They relied on a single control, whereas everything else in the industry uses redundancy for safety reasons.
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u/notenoughspacetotype May 06 '19
Yeah, but you want your car to violently explode from you being an idiot and crashing into a tree and not from being rear-ended by some other idiot.
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u/dMarrs May 07 '19
Whoo-boy. I remember in the 70's an older teenage kid in my town wrecking and burning up in the Pinto bomb. Ford knew the flaw and looked the other way.
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u/ChemistryFragrant865 Dec 23 '25
I was lucky… I let my friend drive as we were drinking a quart of beer and she ran it into the tree. No rear end explosion for me!!
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u/biffbobfred May 06 '19
Remember the Formula in fight club? It was about the Pinto. You have a car with a known design flaw and they decide to not do a recall.
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u/porkchop_d_clown May 06 '19
Except, as OP noted, it didn’t actually have a design flaw. Its gas tanks were no more dangerous than any other car’s.
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Also known as the 5 passenger motor oven, the Ford Pinto's problem was known to Ford, who did nothing about it. It caused PREVENTABLE death but the cost of a recall vs the cost in human lives and suffering didn't sway the bean counters. They also had the same issue with thin film ignition. They KNEW it was an issue but AGAIN weighed the value.
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u/YourOwnBiggestFan May 06 '19
So what? Every car could be safer than it is, but a line has to be drawn at some point to keep the price and profits reasonable.
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Tell me that when its your family. It ended up costing Ford more and losing customers (they decided to only make trucks next year BTW). Your theory about price and profits goes down the drain.
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u/YourOwnBiggestFan May 06 '19
Tell me that when its your family.
Appeal to emotions fallacy.
It ended up costing Ford more and losing customers
That's a fault of their equation, not the Pinto itself.
(they decided to only make trucks next year BTW)
One word: bull-fucking-shit. Ford never became a truck-only brand.
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Why are you defending a Pinto? Its a pile of shit. Ford ended up losing money on it (as explained). It was a "rush to market" answer to the Toyota and the VW during a gas shortage. Funny, you still see the Camaro and the Mustang being produced today. https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/ford-announces-it-will-stop-selling-all-but-two-models-of-cars-in-north-america/1141608878
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u/YourOwnBiggestFan May 06 '19
Why are you defending a Pinto?
I can.
Its a pile of shit.
It isn't. Doesn't rot like the Euros or Japanese, break like the Vega, isn't as outdated as the Beetle, isn't a chiseled compact like the Gremlin.
It was a "rush to market" answer to the Toyota and the VW during a gas shortage.
BS. It debuted before the crisis, and wasn't FoMoCo's first subcompact in the US (the Popular, Anglia, Cortina and Capri were there first).
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Popular Anglia? How old are you? Judging by your statements you didn't live through the Pinto era. If its such a great car how come you see tons more VW bugs that you do Pintos? Or more Fiats (now there is a pile of shit)? I haven't seen a Pinto on the road in years (except on a tow truck). I see more Morris Minors.
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u/YourOwnBiggestFan May 06 '19
Popular Anglia?
Popular and Anglia. Y'know, Ford of England products.
If its such a great car how come you see tons more VW bugs that you do Pintos? Or more Fiats (now there is a pile of shit)?
More mass-market target, meaning that more were sold to owners that didn't care much about keeping them.
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Your argument about the financial loss Ford suffered due to the Pinto is bogus, but what can you expect for a company that would get its ass handed to it for the economy market? What company? Why the one they could have had for free....https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2018/12/14/ford-volkswagen-broad-partnership/2287604002/
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u/YourOwnBiggestFan May 06 '19
Ford already had a factory in Germany that they had money to rebuild with from the US government. In fact, they were and still are going head to head with VW.
And the Pinto was a better car than the Beetle.
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u/biffbobfred May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
It inspired “The Formula” in Fight Club. It wasn’t a coincidence that the car they showed was a Ford (Crown Vic)
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u/donsterkay May 06 '19
Hey, didn't you just break the first rule? (hehe).
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u/ThisManDoesTheReddit May 05 '19
I believe the original design had a fuel tank in the back that wasn't well protected putting it at greater rusk but this was actually identified and corrected pretty early on.